While we're at it, may as well add this entire UConn season to things that are inexplicable. That applies on so many levels.

The Huskies lost Jeremy Lamb and Andre Drummond to the NBA. They lost Alex Oriakhi and Roscoe Smith to transfer. They lost an enormous amount of talent after last season. They lost a Hall of Fame, three-time national championship coach to retirement.

And somehow they're better. They have no interior game, they can't rebound and they have a first-year head coach whose prior coaching experience was two years learning at the feet of Jim Calhoun. This season was not supposed to play out the way it has.

It's quite unbelievable and, honestly, incredibly inspiring. A year ago, the Huskies brought back a title-winning team that lost one player and it was a difficult team to like. This year's team is almost entirely new and, even with all its limitations, is impossible not to love. Explain that?

"We just play together," guard Shabazz Napier said. "We're brothers and we play like it. We support each other no matter what. Last year's team didn't do that very much."

Togetherness in sports might be trite and overplayed, but in this particular case it is true. Following practice Wednesday, just about all of the Huskies gathered in a circle and did little more than laugh and joke with one another. It was one tight circle of guys doing nothing but enjoying each other's company.

It bleeds into their play. The Huskies were outrebounded so badly Thursday night they tied a Big East rebounding deficit record. They were outscored by 13 points at the free-throw line. They blew a 15-point lead so fast that their heads were spinning.

There was really no reason for them to win that game in overtime outside of the fact that they are one determined, gutty and persistent group of people. That's not only impressive, it's also worthy of mountains of respect.

"That was just a gutty win and we found a way," coach Kevin Ollie said. "I don't know how we did it but we found a way to dig deep and get it. That game was all from the heart."

What game hasn't been?

Only in a precious few games this year have the Huskies been more talented than their opponent. Napier and Ryan Boatright arguably make up the best backcourt combination in the country but it nearly stops there. Freshman Omar Calhoun has star written all over him but he's a long way from being there yet. Thursday night's huge shot in overtime will surely help down the line.

DeAndre Daniels is loaded with potential. He's also loaded with a propensity to be up and down. Consistency is not something any of the Huskies not named Napier or Boatright has found. Honestly, this team can be consistently maddening just seconds before it once again gains consistent respect.

The Huskies are involved in the ultimate Sisyphean exercise this year. No matter how good they are, no matter how many heads they turn, no matter how well they do in the classroom, it all really has little meaning in basketball terms. On March 9, the season ends. That is a travesty for this particular group, sons punished for the sins of the father.

Yet, the Huskies keep pushing that rock up the hill. They move it farther and farther every time and don't seem to care that it will come rolling back down over them.

Just playing this season meant battling adversity given the lack of a reward.

In seemingly every game, there is some new kind of adversity and the Huskies find new, often inventive, ways to fight through it.

"We talk all the time about playing through difficult times," Ollie said. "That's what they did. Sometimes, you have to dig deep. When we dug deep, we found something that was in our reserve tank."

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